The San Marino GP saw a welcome return to action on Friday morning after the cancellation of the British GP race 2 weeks earlier. Sunny skies greeted the riders at Misano and Andrea Iannone was able to take early advantage of this by placing himself initially in the Top 10, and then in the Top 5, as well as being the fastest rider through Sector 1. Meanwhile, Alex Rins placed in the Top 10 with minutes to go, but was bumped to 14th place.

FP2 stayed dry despite the clouds building. With the possibility of rain for tomorrow’s FP3, it was important to set a good pace and provisionally place in Q2. Alex Rins improved his lap time by almost a second and put himself into 7th in the session, just over half a second from the top - a positive step for the Spaniard. With a couple of minutes left in FP2, Andrea Iannone suffered a crash at Turn 15, going down at around 140km/h. The Italian was luckily uninjured and still places in the Top 10 overall thanks to his FP1 pace.

Davide Brivio - Team Manager
“I’m happy that Andrea is OK and the crash didn’t cause any issues. He also managed to stay in the Top 10. It’s been quite a positive Friday because we were worried about the rain coming, and also we’re one of the teams who didn’t test here in Misano, unlike several of our competitors. So to achieve both riders in the Top 10, I think is a good start. Alex was really good and made a stronger lap time during his time attack. Let’s see about tomorrow, and try to continue improving from FP3 onwards.”

Alex Rins
“I’m quite happy because it looks like the things we tried during the Aragón test are working well. For tomorrow we just need to improve the front end of the bike a little bit, but we have a good rhythm. So I think the target for tomorrow’s qualifying will be second or third row. I tried a couple of different tyre options today, but I’m not sure which one I’ll choose for the race yet.”

Andrea Iannone
“Things are going in a good way, we started with a really positive feeling this morning and we continued that into FP2. We started the afternoon session with a used front and used rear tyre, to make a sort of race simulation, and this was also positive for us. Unfortunately when I put the new front and rear tyres in for the final moments, I crashed - losing the front - so I think the tyre was a little bit cold. But in any case, my feeling with the bike isn’t bad. We need to improve on the braking point and on the speed a little more. Let’s see if it rains tomorrow.”